White House engaging in similar dirty tricks to “martial law” threats before 2008 bailout vote

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Senator Jim DeMint has accused President Barack Obama and Timothy Geithner of deliberately fostering panic in order to push through an agreement that would allow the debt ceiling to be raised, accusing the White House of “burning the clock” in order to push a decision close to the deadline, echoing how Congress was threatened with “martial law in America” before the 2008 bailout vote.

On Sunday Treasury Secretary Geithner painted a grim picture of the so-called economic “recovery,” telling NBC’s Meet the Press, “it’s going to feel very hard, harder than anything they’ve experienced in their lifetime now, for a long time to come.”

Accusing Geithner of playing “chicken little” by irresponsibly spreading fear of a catastrophe, DeMint said the administration was deliberately fanning the flames of panic in order to secure a deal on its own terms.

“It’s not ideal but we don’t need to panic and rush into a deal and the President has actually been burning the clock with these secret negotiations pushing us against a deadline so he can create this panic,” DeMint told NBC’s The Today Show.

“We need to keep calm and if the President would work with us on some reasonable cuts, we’ll work with him on giving him an increase on the debt limit. Now is not the time to panic and do something else that is going to make our economy worse and cost us most jobs,” he added.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke echoed Geithner’s warning today, telling Congress that if it fails to raise the debt ceiling by August 2, the economic fallout could be “catastrophic,” “self defeating” and “dire.”

“We are not going to default, we have enough tax revenue to pay our bills,” said DeMint. “It certainly will be disruptive if we continue going on the track we’re going on right now. We have enough asserts, Social Security, Medicare trust fund to pay those benefits if necessary.”

Geithner and Bernanke’s threats sound eerily similar to those made by former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson before the 2008 bailout vote. In an effort to stampede lawmakers into voting for the bailout bill, Paulson threatened lawmakers with “martial law in America” if the legislation failed to pass.

Senator James Inhofe later confirmed that Paulson told members of Congress the crisis would be “far worse than the great depression” if Congress didn’t authorize the bill to buy out toxic debt, a proposal “which he abandoned the day after he got the money,” added Inhofe, referring to how immediately after it was approved, Paulson announced that the bailout money would not be used to buy up toxic debt but would instead be injected directly into banks like Goldman Sachs, of which he was a former CEO.

“Republicans weren’t elected last November to make it easier to spend and borrow and add to our debt,” DeMint told CBS’ “The Early Show” Wednesday.

The US Constitution clearly states that Congress has the exclusive authority to raise and spend money. Article I section 8 states, “The Congress shall have Power….to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States,” and to “borrow Money on the credit of the United States.”

If this plan goes forward it represents yet another alarming advance in the Obama administration’s establishment of an executive dictatorship, which we have documented at length.

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.